Government to invite bids for Rs 3,000-cr solar power projects in August

NEW DELHI: The government will invite bids for 3,000-crore solar power projects with a capacity of 300 mw under the National Solar Mission in the first week of August, a top government official said.

"There was a meeting with the solar power developers on July 8. Based on the meeting, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is looking to tweak some guidelines for the second round of bidding likely to take place in the first week of August," said Anil Agrawal, Chief Executive Officer, NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam, the nodal agency for conducting the selection process for the first stage of Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM).

The projects would be awarded by the end of this year and the power purchase agreements would be signed in January 2012.

In the first round of bidding, the government had awarded 30 solar photovoltaic (pv) projects of 5 mw each having a total capacity of 150 mw and seven solar thermal projects of 470 mw.

It had received applications for developing 1,740 mw of PV projects, compared to the target of 150 mw in the first batch of Phase-I. For solar thermal, it received applications for developing 1,000 mw, against 500 mw.

This time around, the government is looking to increase the size of the projects from 5 mw and may allot higher capacity to the project developers.

Agrawal indicated that there is also an active consideration on banning the import of cells for the next round of bidding.

Currently, companies not being able to arrange the funding by a stipulated date must forfeit their permits and bank guarantees. The government is mulling to tweak this by bringing in the condition of imposing a partial penalty in such condition and give more time to developers to arrange funding for the projects.

"We are interested in ensuring that the project comes up and projects should not be called off for 1-2 months delay in achieving financial closure," Agrawal said. He reiterated that it would be virtually an extension for the developers.

Instead of forfeiture of bank guarantees, the government wants to provide slight leeway to companies to arrange funding during the construction of the project.

The MNRE may get the approval for the changes to be made in the guidelines by the end of this month.